COMMENT | #JusticeforGeorgeFloyd and more

COMMENT | There was a shimmer of hope when Barack Obama became the first black president of the United States. Sadly, Americans today are still judged by the “colour of their skin” and not by the “content of their character”.

Martin Luther King Jr’s dream has yet to find its way through the fog of hate ever since he marched alongside the oppressed over three days for about 90km from Selma, Alabama, to the capital city, Montgomery, in 1965.

I used to show clips of the freedom march and MLK’s speech in my class on race reporting for a comparative context of how the indigenous people of Australia are likewise subject to disproportionate incarceration, police brutality and deaths in custody.

I had two teaching points. First, as the conscience of the people, journalists are duty-bound to expose systemic racism and write about it. Discard journalistic "neutrality" as to remain silent is to condone it.

And secondly, ethnocultural identity can give one a sense of collective strength and communal pride. Yet, the source of pride that borders on blatant racism can sometimes kill – and kill abundantly with impunity. This too must be exposed.

That was the unreported harsh reality in many countries – predominantly in the colonial West - where the indigenous communities, immigrants and slaves were not recognised as proper people with proper rights and freedoms.

I see shades of this racist history in the disheartening visual of George Floyd’s dying gasps...